Venturesome team

CAF

Charities Aid Foundation

BEST BEGINNINGS

June 2017

Best Beginnings is a small charity with a large reach and even bigger social impact. To date the charity has reached over 2 million families across the UK. Founded by Alison Baum in 2006, the charity aims to ensure that every child has the best start in life. It does this by creating and distributing educational tools to help parents build their knowledge and confidence during their transition to parenthood and beyond.

The charity focuses on the period between conception and a child’s third birthday, where the foundations of physical and emotional well-being and language are laid. Evidence shows that informed, confident parenting is more significant than income or background when it comes to maximising a child's potential. Best Beginnings prides itself on developing and delivering innovative, accessible and evidenced based educational videos and digital resources to engage inform and empower. The resources are also used in training healthcare professionals to enhance the parent-professional partnership. The charity’s most recent resource, the Baby Buddy app, won the prestigious AXA PP Health Tech award in 2015 and the BIMA Award and RCM midwifery Award in 2016.

HRH The Duchess of Cambridge at Best Beginnings

In 2014, CAF Venturesome was approached by Best Beginnings for a loan of £50,000 to provide cashflow support to their operations. The loan supported the charity as it looked to diversify its revenue and become financially sustainable and resilient by growing the trading income. Over the last three years the organisation has seen their social impact grow immensely with their digital app achieving over 140,000 downloads to-date since its launch.

“Thanks to CAF Venturesome's flexible bridge loan, we were able to continue to produce and deliver educational videos and digital tools to support and empower parents and front line health professionals as part of our innovative early child health intervention strategy.”

Alison Baum, OBE - CEO and Founder, Best Beginnings

HRH The Duchess of Cambridge with Alison Baum, CEO and Founder of Best Beginnings

Excitingly, in 2016, Best Beginnings was chosen as one of eight charity partners for the Heads Together campaign, spearheaded by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. The charity, as part of Heads Together, is helping to tackle mental health stigma, raise awareness, and signpost vital help for people with mental health challenges. The Duchess of Cambridge spoke at the Best Beginnings launch of its "Out of the Blue" mental health series of films, all available in the digital app.